| We almost rode Sunrize Izumo last year in Japan! We even booked accommodation accordingly, leaving out the one night we ecpected to spend on bord of Sunrise Izumo going from Izumo to Tokyo. Unfortunately even though we tried to book the train as the first thing after arrival, right on the Narita train station ticket office, it was already fully booked. :P At least we managed to book the marvelous SL Hitoyoshi steam train from Hitoyoshi to Kumamoto over Hisatsu line. We were actually double lucky on that one, as SL Hitoyoshi is actually out of service right now as floods in July 2020 washed away key bridges on the Kuma river, cutting the rail connection between Hitoyoshi and Kumamoto, until the bridges are repaired... Still we did go to the very inaka Izuma anyway and spend a very nice old school and almost mythical four days there. And what we did about that missing accommodation? We booked a night in a ryokan in the splendid Kinosaki onsen town instead and it was indescribably good decision! :) It took as like 6 hours by multiple small local diesel trains to get from Izumo to Kinosaki, possibly the only tourists to arrive from that direction in quite a while! :) And on the very elegant Kinosaki station we even discovered a special gate reserved only for guests arriving by one of those luxury cruse trains - namely Twilight Express Mizukaze: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_Express_Mizukaze Likely inspired by the special gate only ueed by the Emperor on Tokyo station. :) |